The present disclosure is related to systems and methods for the laser processing of materials. More particularly, the present disclosure is related to systems and methods for the singulation and/or cleaving of wafers, substrates, and plates containing passive or active electronic or electrical devices created upon said materials.
In current manufacturing, the singulation, dicing, scribing, cleaving, cutting, and facet treatment of wafers or glass panels is a critical processing step that typically relies on diamond or conventional, ablative or breakdown (stealth) laser scribing and cutting, with speeds of up to 30 cm/sec for LEDs, LED devices (such as lighting assemblies) and illuminated devices (such as LED displays) as some examples.
In the diamond cutting process, after diamond cutting is performed, a mechanical roller applies stress to propagate cracks that cleave the sample. This process creates poor quality edges, microcracks, wide kerf width, and substantial debris that are major disadvantages in the lifetime, efficiency, quality, and reliability of the product, while also incurring additional cleaning and polishing steps. The cost of de-ionized water to run the diamond scribers are more than the cost of ownership of the scriber and the technique is not environmentally friendly since water becomes contaminated and needs refining, which further adds to the production cost.
Laser ablative machining has been developed for singulation, dicing, scribing, cleaving, cutting, and facet treatment, to overcome some of the limitations associated with diamond cutting. Unfortunately, known laser processing methods have disadvantages, particularly in transparent materials, such as slow processing speed, generation of cracks, contamination by ablation debris, and moderated sized kerf width. Furthermore, thermal transport during the laser interaction can lead to large regions of collateral thermal damage (i.e. heat affected zone).
Laser ablation processes can be improved by selecting lasers with wavelengths that are strongly absorbed by the medium (for example, deep UV excimer lasers or far-infrared CO2 laser). However, the aforementioned disadvantages cannot be eliminated due to the aggressive interactions inherent in this physical ablation process. This is amply demonstrated by the failings of UV processing in certain LED applications where damage has driven the industry to focus on traditional scribe and break followed by etching to remove the damaged zones left over from the ablative scribe or the diamond scribe tool, depending upon the particular work-around technology employed.
Alternatively, laser ablation can also be improved at the surface of transparent media by reducing the duration of the laser pulse. This is especially advantageous for lasers that are transparent inside the processing medium. When focused onto or inside transparent materials, the high laser intensity induces nonlinear absorption effects to provide a dynamic opacity that can be controlled to accurately deposit appropriate laser energy into a small volume of the material as defined by the focal volume. The short duration of the pulse offers several further advantages over longer duration laser pulses such as eliminating plasma creation and therefor plasma reflections thereby reducing collateral damage through the small component of thermal diffusion and other heat transport effects during the much shorter time scale of such laser pulses.
Femtosecond and picosecond laser ablation, therefore, offer significant benefits in machining of both opaque and transparent materials. However, in general, the machining of transparent materials with pulses even as short as tens to hundreds of femtoseconds is also associated with the formation of rough surfaces, slow throughput and micro-cracks in the vicinity of laser-formed kerf, hole or trench that is especially problematic for brittle materials like alumina (Al2O3), glasses, doped dielectrics and optical crystals. Further, ablation debris will contaminate the nearby sample and surrounding devices and surfaces. Recently, multi-pass femtosecond cutting has been discussed in Japan, utilizing a fiber laser approach. This approach suffers from the need to make multiple passes and therefore results in low processing throughput.
Although laser processing has been successful in overcoming many of the limitations associated with diamond cutting, as mentioned above, new material compositions have rendered the wafers and panels incapable of being laser scribed. Furthermore, the size of the devices and dice on the wafers are getting smaller and closer to each other that limit the utility of both diamond and conventional laser-based scribing. For example, 30 μm is a feasible scribing width, while 15 μm is challenging for these conventional methods. Moreover, as diamond scribing uses mechanical force to scribe the substrate, thin samples are very difficult to scribe. Due to the use of increasingly exotic and complex material stacks in the fabrication of wafer-based devices, the laser scribing techniques previously applied will simply no longer work due to the opacity of the stack.